Future Interlude (AU?): Lucky
- Location
- USA
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Future Interlude (AU?): Lucky
He was a short man, not even as tall as some of the women in the marketplace. Good looking but not stunning. No scars, had all his teeth—which could be seen in his frequent small smiles as he wandered.
Honoka wasn't sure why she had fixated on him. He wasn't that handsome...perhaps it was his hair? His hair was silky and a faintly reddish brown that was unusual but not striking like Auntie Mari's flaming mane. (Which was getting a bit more grey in it these days, sadly.)
She wasn't getting any sense of danger; he didn't move like a ninja and he didn't have callouses like a ninja. Actually, he had no callouses at all. Not even the writer's bump that scribes and many nobles would have had. How did this man live? He was trim but not skinny, toned but not muscular. His skin was healthy, unscarred and unmarked by pox. In fact, it was remarkable how unremarkable he looked while still looking vaguely attractive.
He clearly wasn't unremarkable in person, though. He had chatted up three different vendors and each time it took only seconds before the merchant and the stranger were chattering away like two old biddies over the fence. Each time, it took only another minute before the merchant pressed some of their wares on him and then shook their heads and raised their hands to ward off any possibility of payment. An apple, a meat pastry and slice of cheese, and a wooden mug of cider. The vendor even let him keep the mug!
Auntie Mari could have done that. The cider vendor was a man and in his fifties. She could have flirted and wrapped him around her finger until he was happy to give her the entire stock. This stranger, no. Honoka knew that merchant and knew that he walked firmly on the 'ladies for me, thanks' side of the street. He had no problems with those who didn't, but he wouldn't have responded to flirting from a man.
Uncle Jiraiya could have done it. He could have awed the man by arriving in his own persona as Hokage and legendary ninja hero who had returned from the dead in Leaf's hour of need. The vendor would have bowed in dogeza and pleaded with the Hokage to honor him by taking a mug of cider.
Uncle Jiraiya could have done it in one of his disguises too. Showed up in his peddler disguise, perhaps. An easy smile, a few stories, get the man talking about himself until they were bosom buddies. Uncle would have walked away with a brimming mug and a new intelligence asset.
What neither Uncle Jiraiya nor Auntie Mari could have done was charm the man that fast. It had been well under two minutes from the time the stranger walked up to the time that the stranger left, and the vendor still looked happy. He was even whistling a happy little tune! A rushed con like that should have been noticed after a few minutes, leading to frowns and annoyance. The cider merchant seemed to be having the best day ever.
Huh. It actually was his best day ever. More and more people were drifting over, enough that there was a line.
The same was true of the fruit merchant and the pastry seller. No obvious cause, no barkers shouting, no large groups collectively deciding to stop in. Just three crowds happening to coalesce all at the same time, a lucky happenstance.
The stranger had wandered out of the market, his cider mug in one hand and his pastry in the other. Honoka ghosted in his wake, her instincts nagging at her but not offering specifics. Years in the field had made her respect those instincts.
The problem was, he wasn't doing anything worthy of notice. He nibbled and sipped as he wandered, looking up at the buildings in curiosity as though he'd never seen them before. Not a Leaf citizen, then. Not a spy either, or if he was then he was the most incompetent one ever. Spies would have been working around the Tower, checking to see the progress on the reconstruction. Or maybe loitering around the entrance to the Academy to count how many students of each year went in.
This man was wandering gormlessly through a neighborhood that was getting less and less middle class with every step he took, moving towards the docks that Uncle Hazō had built when he redirected the river to run just outside of Leaf's walls. When was that...eight years ago? Nine? Wow, time flies. ("Like an arrow," Auntie Mari liked to say. And then Uncle Jiraiya would nod solemnly and, with a completely straight face, say "And fruit flies like an apple. Or a melon. Or whatever they can get, really.")
The man finished his pastry just as he walked by a brownstone stoop with a broadsheet abandoned on the steps. He scooped it up without pausing and flicked it open with one hand while continuing to sip his mug with the other. He walked along, nose buried in the words and apparently oblivious to the world.
So oblivious that he stepped into the street without noticing the carriage barreling past. The back rear wheel dropped into a pothole and splashed a load of mud out. It would have struck the stranger in the side but another pedestrian happened to step into the street just at that moment and ended up providing a better shield than the best-trained bodyguard could have managed.
The stranger glanced up in surprise and saw the other man angrily trying to brush the worst of the mud off. The stranger said a few words, not loud enough for Honoka to hear from where she lurked on a roof two buildings down, and then looked around. He pointed across the street and said something else.
The mud-soaked citizen followed his finger and cocked his head in surprise. He thanked the stranger, checked that the way was clear, and hurried over to a box labeled 'Free! Take me!' He reached inside and pulled out a shirt that was nearly a duplicate of the one he was wearing, except better quality. Its only flaw was a very slightly frayed spot at the bottom. Aside from that, it was perfect. The dye was even, the buttons solidly attached, the stitching even. And, of course, it wasn't drenched in mud.
What?? Sure, some rich people offloaded their unwanted clothes like that, leaving them on the street as donations for the poor, but it was unusual that they would come into a neighborhood like this one to do it.
The stranger had wandered off, still sipping his cider and reading his broadsheet. Up ahead, Honoka could hear the sounds of a neighborhood block party; zither and hand drums and pipes, people laughing.
The man finished his cider just as he arrived at the block party, and a laughing woman in a peasant blouse refilled it for him before pulling him into the dance circle. He spun and capered with her for two turns around the fire, stepping in time to the music and maintaining flawless position among the flow of other dancers. Then he bowed and wandered off. He finished his paper, folded it up, and tossed it casually aside without looking. It landed just in front of the feet of an old man who sat on a stoop watching the dancers. The old fellow stepped forward and bent over to get it, his back clearly stiff from age. A bird pooped where he had been sitting, but fortunately he noticed before resuming his seat. He shifted to the other end of the step and leaned back to read the paper.
Two blocks later, the stranger strolled past a tall man and a dark-haired woman standing at the side of the street, shouting at each other at the top of their lungs in the way that only long-married couples do. The angry husband shook a fist at his wife, face red and seeming on the edge of violence. Honoka tensed, wondering if she was going to need to abandon her surveillance in order to go to the woman's rescue, but just at that moment someone emptied their nightsoil bucket out the window and directly onto the man's head. Both husband and wife forgot about their beef with each other and started shouting at the person inside the house; the person in question snorted and slammed the shutters, ending the argument. The wife pulled a rag from her pocket and started wiping the filth from her husband's head.
Okay, this was getting ridiculous.
The stranger bent over and picked up a fifty ryō piece that someone had dropped on the street. He dropped it in his pocket and patted it happily. Half a block later he tossed it into the hat of a beggar, apologetically turning his pockets inside out to show them empty. The beggar thanked him and shuffled across the street to a ramen stand while the stranger continued on his way.
Movement caught Honoka's eye. The stranger's clothes had blended right into the market back at Namikaze Park, but in this neighborhood they stood out like a bonfire for being unpatched and unfrayed. A pair of toughs had noticed and were following him. One of them slipped a cosh from his pocket and held it down by his leg, out of sight but ready.
Honoka started to move...and then paused. Yes, it was her duty to protect Leaf's citizens, but this was too strange and she wanted to see it play out. She could intervene before anything went too far.
The two toughs sped their steps slightly, their longer legs allowing them to catch the stranger. Honoka expected him to hear it, glance back and see the danger. He didn't. He kept ambling casually along, looking up at the shabby two-storey buildings as though they were the most fascinating things ever created.
The thug with the cosh made his move, arm going up and running the last couple of steps, swinging his weapon right to left to catch his victim on the side of the head. Honoka Substituted herself with a garbage can waiting by the curb and stepped forward to catch the weapon, but she had left it just a little too long, moved just a little too slowly—
The stranger bent down to pick up a ten ryō piece and the attack whiffed over his head. The thug stumbled, off-balanced by the lack of resistance, stubbed his toe on a cobblestone, and fell. He cracked his knee on another cobble and shrieked in pain, clutching at the injury. His friend, eyes wide at seeing a ninja appear in their midst, turned and ran for his life.
Honoka let him go. She had seen his face and that was enough. More important things to do right here.
A woman in the uniform and headband of the Medical Corps stepped out of the alley, her doctor's bag in one hand. Honoka recognized her...she was a second-year intern in the trauma department, she had stitched Honoka up after her last mission. Name, name, name...Nakajima, that was it.
"Are you all right, young man?" Nakajima asked, seeing the thug on the ground. She clucked her tongue. "Hit your knee, I take it? These cobbles are terrible for that. Let me check that it isn't fractured." She bent over him; green medical chakra glowed from her right forefinger, forming itself into an impossible sharp scalpel that sliced the man's pant leg effortlessly open to bare the injury. She brushed her glowing left hand across the area and the thug slumped in relief as the pain vanished.
Nakajima manipulated his knee a moment, then nodded. "Fractured, yes, and a damaged tendon. Lucky thing for you I was coming back from my rounds. This could have been bad if you had tried to walk on it. Hold still a moment." Green chakra flowed from her hands, laced itself into his knee, and went to work. It took only a few seconds, and then she retracted the energy and used a minor suturing jutsu to meld the cut edges of the man's pant leg back together, good as new and without so much as a seam to show where they'd been cut.
"There you go," she said, patting his leg with a smile. She stood up and offered Honoka a polite nod. "Jōnin. Dark nights to you."
"Doctor," Honoka said politely. "Empty beds to you."
The doctor smiled briefly at her erstwhile patient, adjusted her headband, and strode off.
Honoka blinked back to herself, suddenly realizing that she had allowed herself to be distracted from her pursuit of the stranger. She had questions and he had better have answers.
She looked around, but he was out of sight. She split off a pair of Shadow Clones and leaped for the roofs, each of them taking a different direction.
One of her clones found him half a mile away, window shopping at the end of the clothing district's first block while the crowd flowed around him. Moments later, Honoka Prime dropped to the street in front of him, recalling her chakra from the clones as she touched down. The civilian shoppers all bent their paths out of her way.
"Hold up there," she said to the stranger. "I've got some questions for you."
"Oh?" he said, offering an easy smile. "Of course. How may I help you, ma'am?"
That...was not the reaction of a civilian suddenly accosted by a ninja.
"Let's start with your name."
"Sune Akagi," he said, offering a polite and slightly florid bow. "At your service. How may a humble nomad such as myself be of service to such a beautiful young woman?"
"Nomad, huh? Where from?"
"Oh, here and there. Most recently from Tanzaku Gai. They have wonderful desserts there—I found this one shop where they put down layers of pastry dough one at a time, drenching each one in honey and finely-chopped salted nuts until they have something as thick as your thumb and so good. Mm." He clasped his hands in delight at the memory. "People are so inventive, don't you think? Always coming up with new and fascinating and delicious things."
"When did you get to town?"
"Sometime this morning. I wasn't paying close attention to the hour. I browsed a bit near the gate, then wandered over to Namikaze Park. They have this lovely market. Very friendly people, and so generous!"
The merchants of Leaf were generous?
"Are you high?" she asked.
His thin eyebrows went up and he raised his hands in denial and placation. "Not a drop, not a dram. I swear it on every star. Not that it's necessary—I would never lie to such a beautiful flower as yourself, your stem so filled with steel and your face overflowing with the beauty of spring's first blossoms."
Honoka snorted. It had been a while since anyone had tried that much butter on her, and at the time she'd been on an infiltration mission in the guise of a noblewoman.
"I think perhaps you should come with me," she said. "I want you to talk to my uncle. You're just a little off and I think he'll want to find out why."
He set a hand on his heart in shock and hurt. "'Off'? Me? I promise, I'm the most ordinary human you'll ever meet. Very uninteresting, truly."
"Yah, well, humor me." She reached out to take his wrist but had to pull her hand back as the door of the shop they'd been standing in front of suddenly swung open, almost bonking her in the face as it did. A customer came out, an older man with a walrus mustache who touched his forehead and dipped his head in polite regard as he passed her.
Honoka cursed and shoved around the man, her brain throbbing with the frustrating certainty that her prey would be running for it.
He wasn't running. He was simply gone, disappeared into the crowd. She jumped to the wall, climbing a few feet up so that she could get a better view. People fleeing through a crowd always left a wake that was highly visible from above. Even if they weren't actually running, their tense, hurried movements still disrupted the pattern.
There was no disruption. Everyone was moving normally, Leaf citizens so inured to ninja and their wacky methods of travel that they didn't bother looking up at one clinging to a wall. In fact, the only thing looking her way was a small reddish-brown fox at the very end of the block.
The fox studied her for a moment and then, with a flirt of its tail, it was around the corner and gone.
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